Intermission: Old Spice guy & librarian influence

I had to interrupt my series posting to throw out a quick one on Old Spice Guy. If you’re not aware of the viral phenomenon, Old Spice has a campaign where they have the star from their TV ads respond to tweets with YouTube videos. I think every librarian I know has already seen this one:

Fast Company has an interview with Iain Tait, the Global Interactive Creative Director behind the ad campaign, in which he talks about how they choose which tweets to respond to:

we’ve built an application that scans the Internet looking for mentions and allows us to look at the influence of those people and also what they’ve said. They’re working in collaboration with the creative team that are there to pick out the messages that: 1. Have creative opportunity to produce amazing content; or 2. Have the ability to then embed themselves in an interesting or virally relevant community.

It’s not just picking people with huge followings, it’s a really interesting combination.

So, big props to AndyWoodworth for getting the ball rolling on Twitter, and hurray for libraries being “an interesting or virally relevant community.” Good fun!